North Korea s Political Future

North Korea s Political Future Bruce Cumings Professor of History University of Chicago An Interview with Tushar Khadloya 9 May 2007 Bruce Cumings is a professor of history at the University of Chicago and author of North Korea: Another Country. Brown Journal of World Affairs: North Korea is obviously a country that comes to mind quickly when thinking of countries with authoritarian leaders. You wrote in North Korea: Another Country that Kim Jong-il s son, Kim Jong-nam, was his likely successor, but recent reports have claimed that Kim Jong-nam has fallen out of favor. Right now, it appears that the successor could be any one of Kim Jong-il s three sons Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-chul, and Kim Jong-woon. Who of these is most likely to succeed Kim Jong-il? 65 Bruce Cumings: Well, I think that Kim Jong-nam was and still is Kim Jong-il s favorite son. He got into trouble trying to get into Japan apparently to go to Disneyland on a false passport. And ever since that happened, people have said he has egg on his face. I still would handicap him first if Kim Jong-il gives off leadership to one of his sons or relatives, but no one can really know this without knowing the inner workings of the North Korean regime and there isn t anybody outside of North Korea that knows that. What I think is most significant is that the regime has still established no procedure for succession that goes beyond the leader s family, which suggests that trust at the top levels of the regime is not necessarily very strong. What you have in North Korea is kind of a communist monarchy. Consequently, to figure out how Kim Jong-il succeeded his father or who might succeed Kim Jong-il is really to talk about a very old discipline of politics: royal politics the relationships between the king and the various families and clans that surround him. Those relationships in North Korea will play a role in determining who succeeds Kim Jong-il. Copyright 2007 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs Fall/Winter 2007 volume xiv, issue i

Bruce Cumings Journal: I ve been to that Disneyland I don t blame him. So who besides Kim Jong-il will determine the successor? 66 Cumings: Because many people in North Korea, especially the top elite, have had their fortunes wrapped up with either Kim Jong-il or his father, Kim Il-sung, they themselves may want one of Kim Jong-il s sons to succeed him so that this elite stays in power. Kim Jong-il is still the maximum leader, and everything that is important in North Korea has to have his signature. If someone were to decide that there would not be a familial succession, but instead it would be thrown open to the party or to the top levels of government to choose the next leader, then that would have to be a decision that Kim Jong-il would make. No one could make that decision except him, but I can imagine a collegial decision among the top elite families, in figuring out which one of Kim Jong-il s sons might be best to succeed him. Therefore, I am sure there are many discussions probably often delicate discussions among the elite families about which of the sons might best succeed Kim Jong-il. In the case of Kim Jong-il, he went around with his father for 30 years, tagging along even during the Korean War 50 years ago. Even then, that regime took 25 or 30 years to make it known publicly that he was going to be the successor. It wasn t until the 1980 Sixth Party Congress that he was designated as successor, but anyone with half a brain realized that Kim Jong-il was going to succeed his father. So that process was open to the extent that anything is open in North Korea. Today, it s a much more closeted process because he hasn t designated a successor. I think that one of the real curiosities of North Korea is the geriatric nature of its leadership. Kim Jong-il is one of the younger members of the top leadership at 65 years old. Around 2000, he was the only one of the top 40 leaders who was under 60 years old, and today, of the top 20 leaders, I think the average age is around 75 or 76. So you re dealing with people, at the top levels of the regime, who lived through much of the Kim Il-sung period and supported the succession to Kim Jong-il. And if there is another succession anytime soon, I m sure they ll want to follow the procedures that resulted in Kim Jong-il being made the maximum leader. Journal: Do you anticipate another very smooth transition or do you think a power struggle could potentially occur this time around? Cumings: Well, we only have one transition to go on. Kim Jong-il s succession after Kim Il-Sung died in 1994 was really one of the only stable things that happened in the 1990s the economy was falling apart, people were starving, et cetera. And meanwhile, the top leadership remained cohesive, and Kim Jong-il took full power in 1998. It was a the brown journal of world affairs

North Korea s Political Future smooth process. I thought that the transition after Kim Il-sung died would be smooth, but most experts were constantly predicting that when Kim Il-sung finally died the North Korean regime would be overthrown. They were completely wrong. North Korea s regime, going back 40 years, has been remarkably stable compared to other communist regimes. You really have to go back to the 1950s to find any large purges. Kim Il-sung came to effective power in the 1940s, and his group and the people around him have been in effective power ever since. Based on the transition during the 1990s and the regime s long-term stability, you would assume that there will be another smooth succession to whomever it is that Kim Jong-il chooses to succeed him. It s possible, given the really difficult crises that North Korea has been through, that someone in the military in the wake of Kim Jong-il s death might attempt a coup. It wouldn t surprise me, but it s much more likely that they ll have a fairly smooth transition to the next generation. Journal: In addition to a military coup, what are some other internally destabilizing factors that North Korea could face during a transition? Cumings: Well it s a very hard situation to estimate because they ve got nothing but destabilizing factors. I mean, their economy is in a state of collapse. It s growing marginally at 2 or 3 percent a year in the last few years but we re talking about an urban industrial economy that has more or less collapsed and is now very dependent on aid coming from outside. You also had a very difficult confrontation between the United States and North Korea in 1994 and again in 2002 and 2003 when it was plausible and possible that North Korea would be the victim of a preemptive attack. You have hundreds of thousands of people dead and 35 percent of the younger generation malnourished and stunted. These are problems any one of which might bring down a different kind of government. This government knows how to stay in power come hell or high water. I think they themselves fear a transition that would be destabilizing, and one thing that I m sure many North Koreans, including common people, believe is that for 62 years they ve essentially had a king named Kim Il-sung and his son in power. And whatever else you may think about that, it s been a stable political situation. They haven t had a civil war or all kinds of political conflict racking the country, and that kind of stability might be preferable to an unknown and unexpected future. And so, in that context, I think there s probably a fairly high degree of support for maintaining this communist monarchy, and that means passing leadership off to one of Kim Jong-il s sons or a member of Kim Il-sung s family Kim Jong-il himself was a son by another marriage. 67 Fall/Winter 2007 volume xiv, issue i

Bruce Cumings Journal: Commentators have discussed several destabilizing factors as threatening to the Workers Party of Korea, such as famines and exposure to the outside world. What, if anything, are the real effects of these forces? What explains the regime s strength, given that the WPK continues to face instabilities? 68 Cumings: Well, the Workers Party has essentially been destabilized already. It has been almost displaced by the military and Kim Jong-il s military-first policy. It s really quite unprecedented for a communist state, but for more than ten years, the military has been North Korea s most powerful institution. The Workers Party isn t nearly the force that it was when Kim Il-sung was alive. This wasn t caused by anything other than Kim Jong-il s own insecurities: his first big position in 1992, when his father was still alive, was heading the military commission that commands the army. Kim Jong-il continues to constantly show up at various military gatherings and bases. North Korea is a garrison state more than a communist state. It s one where everybody serves in the military for long periods of time. It s the most militarized state on the face of the earth. Kim Jong-il s hold on power fundamentally comes from the military being the strongest institution in the country and from the country being so militarized. So to mount a serious challenge to Kim Jong-il requires taking on the military, and that s why the only kind of alternative political force that I could imagine coming to power in North Korea would be some commander who takes over in a military coup. But if you are looking at something like the famines that occurred in the 1990s, the most terrible period was in 1997 to 1998 when at least hundreds of thousands if not millions died and the system of delivering goods and services to people through the state essentially collapsed, so it was every person for himself, especially among poor people. That shook the regime very badly, but it wasn t enough to overthrow the regime or for the regime itself to collapse. So essentially what you ve had for the past 15 years has been political stability along with the crumbling of the economy and its ability to produce rice and other types of grain. And I don t know what that tells you other than that this is an extremely hard regime to overthrow; it has total power, and the ruling elite know how to hold on to power. It s also a very melancholy, daunting thing to recognize because it means that Kim Jong-il and his friends are willing to starve people to death rather than give up power, and they ve shown themselves capable of doing that. I don t think they were deliberately doing that, but nonetheless it happened and it s inexcusable for a regime that controls everything to allow it to happen. Journal: Is Kim Jong-il like a Fidel Castro, whose political power is based on charisma, legend, and the aura that he exudes? Does he have characteristics that will be hard for a successor to dupliciate? the brown journal of world affairs

North Korea s Political Future Cumings: I don t think he has much actual charisma at all. His charisma comes from being anointed by his father. When the succession to Kim Jong-il was being promoted in the propaganda organs of North Korea, the regime used nothing but organic childbirth images to justify Kim Jong-il coming to power. So his power is legitimated in North Korea on the basis of bloodline. And the regime says this all the time like a reactionary regime from the 1930s that Kim Il-sung s bloodlines are the best, Kim Jong-il shares those bloodlines, and that s why he s our leader. It s also very characteristic of a country that had monarchy and monarchic succession from a king to a prince for centuries. It has very little to do with communism or modern government. Kim Jong-il is an effective leader though, in the sense that he managed to succeed his father during a very difficult period in North Korean history in the mid-1990s and to hold on to that power and to hold back whatever challenges there were to him I don t think we know much about the challenges, but I m sure there were some. He s a worldly person and he s well informed. He might, I think, like to rule over a different country I said that in my North Korea book. I don t know to what extent that s true, but his hold on power fundamentally comes from the military being the strongest institution in the country and from the country being so militarized. North Korea is much more open than it was ten years ago, which is not to say it s very open. The door is cracked open: a lot of foreigners go back and forth, thousands of South Koreans go back and forth, and I just read today that they sent about 30 technicians to a school in China to learn more about information technology. You see these kinds of reports all the time; markets are functioning in North Korea all over the country. I just think that they themselves are very much afraid to throw the doors open because when that happens the regime will be undermined not overnight, but slowly and surely. That s what they think, and they show morbid insecurity about opening up the country. So I think it s generally the judgment that if they really opened up, that would be the end of the Kim Jong-il regime. Many people say that that s probably something that the high leadership thinks. I myself think that they can probably do what the Chinese and the Vietnamese have done, which is to maintain Communist Party rule while joining the world economy as long as the economy grows rapidly and provides a source of legitimacy as it does in China and Vietnam. Now those two countries have shown a model of how to make a transition from closed communism to some kind of hybrid form of communism and capitalism. In other words, there aren t any good role models for North Korea in Eastern Europe or Russia they just collapsed and that was the end of it. But in the near neighborhood, you do have two examples of communist regimes that have persisted now for 20 or 25 years while opening up their economies. 69 Fall/Winter 2007 volume xiv, issue i

Bruce Cumings Journal: To continue on this theme of becoming more open, both Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-chul have spent extensive time outside North Korea. You indicated that one of them is likely to be the next leader. Is their contact with the outside world likely to cause them to open up the country more if one of them were able to take on political leadership? 70 Cumings: Well, it would be completely unprecedented for one of those two to come to power because both have been educated in Europe instead of at a North Korean university. And one would think that having a European education would make the leadership more worldly and cosmopolitan. I would be skeptical myself, however, because Kim Jong-il knows about the rest of the world, and there are many North Koreans, especially the younger elites, who have traveled all over the world, usually as part of their diplomatic entourage. But the younger elites have to deal with these hard-bitten old codgers the keepers of the hermit kingdom, so to speak who are in their seventies and eighties, are not very worldly, and deeply believe that if their country is opened their system of politics will fall. This is a very strong influence in North Korea that can only be overcome incrementally, and even then it will be difficult. If Kim Jong-nam or Kim Jong-chul were to come to power and believe that North Korea ought to follow on the paths of the countries that they ve visited or studied in Europe, then the obvious, inevitable result would be to hold elections to have a free and open political atmosphere. I don t even think one of them as the top leader would have the power to do that, but that s obviously what should happen and it s what will happen someday. However, I don t think it will come as an initiative of the top leader. Journal: How should the United States and the rest of the world handle North Korea during a future transition? Is this a time to take advantage of North Korea s transition to influence the regime? Cumings: I think the South Koreans might be able to influence the succession because they have been engaged in a reconciliation process with North Korea since 1998, and it s gone a lot further than most Americans realize. But, if the United States tried to manipulate North Korean politics after the death of Kim Jong-il, I cannot imagine that it would be anything other than a disaster. The United States has no influence in that country until it gets an embassy there. The only influence it has is essentially a negative one of embargoing the North Korean economy and piling up a lot of military force against North Korea. But if there were outside involvement in fashioning a different leadership or influencing a different leadership, the brown journal of world affairs

North Korea s Political Future I think it would have to come from South Korea or possibly China but it wouldn t come from the United States as long as the United States doesn t have an embassy there and essentially friendly relations with North Korea. Journal: How likely is it that China or other East Asian powers would try to manipulate the regime? Cumings: It s possible. South Koreans are very worried that China is getting paramount influence in North Korea. When you go to North Korea, the vast majority of goods sold in markets are made in China and not in North Korea. The economic influence of China is towering in North Korea because, in addition to marketing a lot of goods there, they provide North Korea with oil and grain on a large scale. But the Chinese know better than anybody else given that their relations with Kim Il-sung and his friends go back to the 1930s when Il-sung was a member of the Chinese Communist Party that you don t get very far by pushing the North Koreans around. They have a huge army. China could obviously defeat North Korea if it came to a conflict, but it would take a long time and a lot of people would die. It s just unlikely that any foreign country is going to have a decisive influence on North Korean politics. South Korea has the best chance, but it would have to be something deft and indirect in order to influence North Korean politics. 71 Journal: You indicated that opening the country would be a very incremental process. Will halting the nuclear weapons program follow the same model? Cumings: Well, we re still testing the proposition of North Korea giving up its nuclear program in return for a normalization of relations with the United States. I mean, that s been the U.S. position for 15 years now. Bill Clinton, at first, nearly went to war over the nuclear program in June 1994, and then he made the framework agreement in October 1994 and succeeded in freezing that reactor for eight years, but the process of normalization was much slower. I think that if Clinton had normalized relations with North Korea and put an embassy there, we d still have a frozen or even dismantled plutonium facility in North Korea. The Bush administration reversed everything that Clinton had done or let it fall by the wayside, and for four years there was a distinct danger of things really getting out of hand between North Korea and the United States. But eventually Bush came around essentially to the Clinton position by making the Six-Party talks agreement in February 2007 on denuclearizing North Korea. It s an agreement very similar to the one in 1994; it s a back-to-the-future situation. And what we have to do is wait and see Fall/Winter 2007 volume xiv, issue i

Bruce Cumings if, once the North Koreans get their money back from Banco Delta Asia, whether they start to implement the agreement. I think they will. I think they wouldn t have made the agreement if they didn t plan to implement it, but it also requires that the Bush administration do its part. I don t think you can say that the Clinton administration really did its part to uphold the agreement in 1994 by normalizing relations, and I think the price the United States has to pay to make North Korea a non-nuclear power is the normalization of relations. I think North Korea would get a lot more aid from the United States, and access to aid elsewhere, after normalization. More important, if the relationship between the United States and North Korea normalized, Japan would be under pressure to do likewise. And then Pyongyang would gain access to the enormous amount of money Prime Minister Koizumi talked about when he visited in 2002 reparations, the Koreans call it. North Korea would get the equivalent in current dollars of what South Korea got in 1965, so this package of credits and loans could be worth as much as $12 billion. Normalization would also greatly help North Korea s strategic situation, because it could then play Washington off against Beijing, just as it played Moscow off against Beijing during the cold war. 72 Journal: Do you think that the current deliberations on the Indo U.S. civilian nuclear deal will undermine U.S. attempts to have North Korea halt its nuclear program? Cumings: Yes, they would if there were any consistency in this business, but there isn t. Therefore I don t think it ll really undermine things. These are two separate bilateral issues. If you re interested in principles of consistency, it s quite terrible what the Bush administration did: they essentially caved in and made a deal with India that is in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT]. Of course, India never joined it, so that s another contradiction. The United States is a signatory to the NPT, but it has never done much of anything to follow through on the promise to get rid of its own nuclear weapons and not to target other countries with nuclear weapons. So when you look at the non-proliferation regime, it seems to go from bad to worse, and that deal with India was a particular blow to the non-proliferation regime. But in regard to North Korea, you still have a consensus in the region and around the world that North Korea should not have nuclear weapons. It s a curious case: with one of the worst regimes on the face of the Earth, you might actually get a good non-proliferation outcome. A W the brown journal of world affairs